


Elegy for Actaeon of the Hounds

by DesdemonaKaylose



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Sex, Bottom Megatron, Historical References, Light Masochism, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pagan Gods, Porn with Feelings, Sappho (fl. 600 BCE) Poetry, Service Submission, There's some ravishment kink mixed in here too, niche as hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:48:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27967091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: “I willshowyou,” Megatron said, his temper rising behind his teeth. “I will find your monster and bring it to you, and you will all be forced to admit there is no such fancy as a deathless thing.”Megatron, former slave and gladiator, lets his stubbornness get the better of him.
Relationships: Megatron/Rung (Transformers)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 99





	1. What Green Altar

**Author's Note:**

> how much classical paganism can I fold into transformers, a comic about robots that transform into cars? I swear when I started writing this I only wanted to write 2k of porn, somehow it developed an arc, I should stop being surprised by anything this year

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_

The woods were lovely, dark and deep. Megatron had been hunting within their thorny realm more times than he could count since he took up in this town, only a few days' ride from the place where he was born and still (in every way that mattered) several lifetimes away. 

He hunted. There was no other tradecraft left for him, a boy who had been stolen for the games in a far away capital of a far away kingdom. He hunted deep, although everyone who lived in the town where he had come to settle warned him that it was a dead man’s folly to venture there. The edges of the woods were safe enough, but to pass the ring of old oaks—to move any deeper than that ancient demarcation—was to trespass on territory of the other world.

Something walked those woods, they told him; something ancient and deathless and unearthly. The townsfolk were not friendly to him, because he was an outsider and a barbarian and a killer by trade, but all the same they bought his skins and meats and offered him their advice as they went. 

It was superstition of course. Whatever mad hermit had walked there once was long dead now, or else it was only a very large elk, or possibly a bear come too far south. But when Megatron had declared this, outside the pub on butcher’s street, the declaration had been met with anger and stomping and the knocking of mugs against tables.

“Don’t test things what you don’t understand,” the old butcher, well respected, had told him. “Them that goes poking in beehives gets stung.”

“Yes,” Megatron said, “because there are _bees_ there, which are easily dealt with by beekeepers all across the known world.”

“Don’t you believe in anything?” the farrier had demanded, with half his current cup spilled down his front already. 

“I believe in what my eyes see and my hands feel,” Megatron retorted, to a chorus of unimpressed boos. “I believe in blood, and I believe in reason. I believe that if you strike a beast through the heart, the beast will die.”

There was a general cacophony of disapproval, disbelief, and derision, as everyone in the pub made their opinion on the subject loudly known. Megatron smacked the flat of his hand against the table nearest him, creating just enough breakage in the din to get his voice through.

“I will _show_ you,” Megatron said, his temper rising behind his teeth. “I will find your monster and bring it to you, and you will all be forced to admit there is no such fancy as a deathless thing.”

And they had bet him that he would not manage it so he was welcome to try, and Megatron had left that place in a black mood, all sorts of uncharitable thoughts swimming through his head.

Now he walked in the moonlight, what little of it could reach him through the canopy overhead, alone in the deep woods. His soft-soled boots crushed undergrowth quietly; he ventured as deep as he had ever gone. The trees grew thicker at their trunks and the spaces between them grew wider, until it seemed he was walking in an enormous overgrown orchard.

There was a rustle in the distance. Megatron lifted his bow and scanned the gloom, but there was no telltale flicker of motion. He kept the bow up anyhow, arrow knocked, his fingers on the string. He might only have a moment when the beast appeared.

Beyond the strange orchard, moonlight pooled through the farthest trees. Megatron stepped out from beneath the leafy canopy and into a kind of wild garden, a clearing spotted with flowering trees, white petaled against the starry indigo sky. His boots splashed unexpectedly as he stepped into the overflow of a little pond, as clear as the night.

Between the slender pines, at the edge of the spring, something turned its head to stare at Megatron.

The eyes opened in surprise—big and teal and luminescent, like the sea that Megatron hadn’t seen since he escaped the empire years ago, with beautiful long lashes as dark and delicate as a deer’s—the two-point, fragile antlers above a face unaged and ageless—a slender, flat-chested body, legs that hooked back into a deer’s hooves and haunches. 

The sight struck him still. They stared at each other, lost in this strange moment of encounter.

Megatron’s arm shook; somewhere between the drawing of the string and the flash of brilliant eyes, his mind had lost its grip on time, but his muscles were under no such enchantment. His body strained against the 60 pound draw weight and then abruptly collapsed—the string broke free of his fingers, the arrow went wide, and the heavy _thock_ of metal against wood rang through the garden.

Fletching quivered in the split-open bark only a hand’s length from the pale, startled visage.

The creature flared and then narrowed its eyes.

“Well that’s extremely rude,” it said, in a light toned tenor, a frown sweeping its beautiful alien features. “You come uninvited into my glade and _shoot_ at me, do you? And me here minding my own business. You hunters. You _men.”_

It took a meaningful step towards Megatron, who belatedly scrabbled for another arrow, aware now that he was on the defensive. The creature’s frown deepened; its dark eyebrows furrowed.

“Now none of that,” it said. And then it lifted its arm and snapped, and all at once Megatron fell to his knees in a disoriented euphoria of shaking limbs and dizzy vision. The awareness of his own body shifted, becoming incomprehensible to him. His limbs twisted, his bones became hot gold inside his flesh—and still, none of it hurt. All the time the creature only watched him, vaguely disapproving, with its arms crossed over its lovely slender chest.

“There,” it said, at last, when Megatron had been reduced to a hard-breathing pile of new, weak limbs. “Now we can have a conversation without you pointing that thing at me.”

Unsteady on all fours, with a growing awareness of his utterly changed senses, Megatron pushed himself up onto knobby forelegs. 

The faun creature’s expression shifted into something resembling guilt, or pity, and then he trotted forward and placed a steadying hand on the body that he’d created. “You’re not the first hunter to come looking for me, you know.” 

Megatron was dimly cognizant of how different the touch of a hand felt to his senses through a layer of fur.

“It’s not that I’m opposed to hunters in _general,”_ the creature said, as he gently coaxed Megatron up off his several knees. “It’s just that you _really_ should respect the living space of people who are older than you. I thought you men all knew that by now. This place _is_ a sacred spot, my dear. Just because there’s no cult currently hosting orgies or what-have-you doesn’t mean it’s free to barge in on with your bow drawn. For whatever good you thought that would do you.”

Four legs. A heavy feeling at the crown of his skull. A strangely wide vision of the world.

The creature tisked. “What were you going to do with me anyway, eat me? Drag my body around the town square and collect bets from your friends? _I’m_ certainly not part of your food chain.” 

_Elk,_ Megatron thought. _This is the body of an elk._

“Although you _are_ the first to hesitate,” the creature added, thoughtfully now.

Megatron, steadier on his legs now, was taller than the creature who had cursed him. The faun reached up and patted his muzzle gently, fingers soft and uncalloused. 

“Maybe you’re not entirely a lost cause. I could afford to give you a bit more leeway, perhaps?”

The faun stepped back, deft on the delicate points of his hooves, and regarded Megatron with inscrutable, luminescent eyes.

“Spend the day in the forest,” it said, “cool off a bit. We’ll talk about your treatment plan tonight, after sunset.” 

\---

Megatron spent the day in the forest. As an elk. It was extremely strange, neither pleasant nor entirely unpleasant, but also quite dull. He could appreciate the change in perspective, he supposed; the perspective of an animal utterly changed the texture of the same woods he had experienced for years as a human man.

The sun tracked its path across the sky. As twilight swallowed the forest, the same creature was waiting for him in the glade already, perched neatly on a rain-smoothed stone. The last edge of gold slipped below the treeline as Megatron made his way (irritably) across the clearing.

His transformation back to himself, abrupt as it was, caught him by surprise. The faun creature made no move, said no magic words—there was simply one existence, a swell of dizzying euphoria, and then another existence. 

When he came back to his full senses, he was on his knees in the soft grass and breathing hard, somehow exhausted and trembling with sensation. 

“You wretched sorcerer, what gives you the _right,”_ Megatron snarled, with a hand pressed to his racing heart, “to alter the body of a stranger for your petty amusement?”

“First of all, you did try to kill me,” the creature said, dryly. “Second of all, not to put too fine a point on it, but I am a god. It _does_ come with the territory. You’re lucky I’m not the sort to have your own hounds rip you to pieces while I watch. This is my home you waltzed into, uninvited.”

Megatron bared his teeth. “There’s no such thing as gods or spirits,” he said, “only superstitious memories and peddlers’ tricks.”

“Ah,” the creature said. “And I suppose spending all day with hooves was just a clever bit of stage magic, then?”

Megatron hesitated. Frankly, he was aware that he was out of his depth here, but he ever hated to admit that he might have been wrong. 

“My name is Rung,” said the so-called god, “and I am very old. Older than memory, older than the trees, older than the hills. Quite forgotten in your time, I think. But nonetheless, here I am.”

The faun uncrossed his neatly crossed legs and leaned forward, palms pressed to the stone on either side of him.

“I’m not an unreasonable God,” he said, “I know mercy. Normally I would just let you live out the rest of your life in the forest, quite harmlessly, as a beast. But I’d like to have a little hope. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

Down on his knees as he was, Megatron could not help but consider the particular detail of Rung’s appearance which he had noticed before, but which had seemed less important to his animal mind: his soft and delicate cock, nestled between his sleek animal thighs. Set in such an otherwise delicate frame, its gentle girth was somewhat... arresting.

“You will serve me,” Rung said, “every night, until the moon is full again. During the day you will be a creature of the forest. At night you will be restored to your natural shape. If you serve me well, at the end of the month I will release you from my service, and you will depart the forest having learned something, I hope, about respecting other people’s private spaces.”

Megatron tore his eyes away from the pink-tipped cock and glared up at the rest of the creature. The creature lifted an eyebrow.

“Yes I see,” Megatron said, spitefully, “you want me to _debase_ myself for your amusement. You would have me on my knees for you, worshipping you, _servicing_ you, at your beck and call nightly. Well then, let’s not waste our time on niceties, if you’ve set your mind to it so cleanly.”

“Er,” Rung said. “What are you doing?”

Megatron finished the half crawl towards Rung’s seat on the broad stone and took either of the creature—the god’s—legs in hand. He jerked Rung to the edge of the stone, the body remarkably light and easy enough to pull, and pushed the sleek knees apart.

“Oh!” Rung said, jolting in Megatron’s grip, “that’s, er, that’s not-”

“Despot,” Megatron muttered, into the warm thigh, “I hope you’re satisfied, to reduce me so.”

He nosed closer, and then licked a broad stripe from the rosy tip up to the base of Rung’s cock, feeling it twitch and jump against his chin. There was a sharp little noise—Megatron looked up, his open mouth still pressed to warm flesh, and found Rung wide-eyed with his hand clapped across his own mouth, pupils swallowing his luminescent green irises.

Megatron closed his lips around the side of the foreskin and sucked, the way he might on a lover’s neck, and Rung let out a noise like a kettle full of steam.

Megatron buried his smug expression under the rapidly swelling hardness.

He had done this quite a lot, in another part of his life, with other gladiators in the patrician’s stable. He’d learned to find a kind of meditative calm in the strain of swallowing down something his throat could barely hold, the methodical work, the little rush of adrenaline every time his body tried to fight him for control of his reflexes. 

Rung kept fastidiously still beneath him, while he worked. Only the most unobtrusive flexing of thigh muscles, only the fierce pressure of the swollen hardness in Megatron’s mouth, gave him away. There were no more moans or little noises, no matter how deep Megatron worked to take him.

His mouth was flush against Rung’s pelvis when the uncertain little tap came at his shoulder. He swallowed again, working the weight in his throat, and the tapping immediately grew more frantic. When he pulled off just enough to look up, mouth still full of cock, Rung had shoved the side of his own hand into his mouth and was biting down on it, his expression caught in some exquisite place between agony and pleasure.

Megatron pulled off, the flat of his tongue dragging at Rung as he went, when Rung gave a little hitching breath and an almost mournful moan and came, in a pulse of warmth, across Megatron’s mouth and chin and cheek. 

Rung’s cock twitched in Megatron’s hand, pushing one last weak dribble down his wrist. Megatron froze. Cum dripped off Megatron’s chin and onto his naked chest in thick, warm drops. 

His heart was going fast. 

Megatron licked bitterness from the corner of his mouth. “Does that satisfy you?” he rasped.

“Nnn?” Rung said, his hand still shoved into his mouth. The skin there shone faintly with a trace of saliva.

“Never mind,” Megatron said, ignoring the too-interested throb of his own erection, “I suppose it’s too much to ask that you’d be satisfied with just that.”

Megatron climbed up over Rung, bracketing his body with thick and dark forearms, forcing him back against the broad flat stone. 

“Aren’t you pushing yourself a bit—hard?” Rung asked, suspiciously out of breath for a so-called divine being. “We can take a, a break, if—”

Megatron’s own cock bobbed heavy and thick between his thighs, the head of it a dusky purple. “I haven’t even begun to expend myself,” Megatron told him. “You won’t find reason to fault my service so easily.”

“Oh,” Rung said. He gave the sky past Megatron’s head an almost pleading look. “Well then.”

Megatron bent his head and took one of Rung’s pink nipples into his mouth, rolling the peak of it over his tongue. By contrast to the rest of him, the god’s upper half was furless and bare, the skin there easily showing red echoes where Megatron’s teeth bit into it. Up close there was a slight swell to his chest, soft, as if his nature toed the line between what was male and what was female.

Megatron took the other slight swell into his hand and squeezed, reveling in the give of it under his fingers.

“Oh sweet Sisyphus,” Rung muttered fervently. 

On a hunch, Megatron let go there and let his hand skate down to the crux of Rung’s hips, where the half-hardness was rapidly growing again. Megatron had to admit, it was a pretty impressive resilience. That had hardly taken five minutes.

He considered his options. It had been a few years since he’d taken anyone to bed, man or woman or otherwise. Still, it wasn’t a skill one forgot in a few years, even if his body would probably protest. But perhaps he was getting ahead of himself. It was only the first night of a _month,_ after all. 

Megatron let his hips come to rest between Rung’s hips. He was bigger, more broadly proportioned, but Rung’s lighter body flared a bit at the hips, and their edges were oddly well matched. His full weight would crush Rung, if he let it—it was strange to find himself held in the thrall of someone so much smaller, so much frailer than himself. And yet he was caught in this being’s power, as surely as if a giant had caught him about the throat.

With deliberate measure, Megatron bore down against Rung’s hips. The little faun startled, his hands coming up between them as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to shove away. Megatron reached down between them, pushed Rung’s now mostly-hard cock against his belly, and bore down again in a slow, meaningful grind. Silky flesh dragged against Megatron’s stomach. Rung’s lashes fluttered. A soft gasp escaped his mouth.

It only took three thrusts before Rung threw his arms up around Megatron’s neck and gave into it.

“Put yours next to mine,” Rung said, his hand groping blindly at the curve of Megatron’s thigh. “I want to - I want to feel it, it’s so - hard, it’s so much hotter than I thought it would feel.”

 _Odd_ , some part of Megatron thought. But he _was_ hard himself, running hot, and the silky smooth skin of Rung’s belly felt so good against his neglected cock, and after that he didn’t think much of anything about anything. He only rocked himself, slowly and relentlessly, until his body felt starry with pleasure. At some point, Rung’s leg had come up against his side, locking him in tighter. 

“Don’t stop,” Rung hissed, “absolutely - do _not_ stop -”

Megatron shivered. What remained of his thoughts understood this to mean he must not come before Rung, on pain of punishment. An excruciating wave of pleasure took him, and he buried his face in Rung’s neck to keep it from showing. He must keep control of himself.

Rung arched, fingers digging into Megatron’s back, and then with a jolt and a strangled moan, slickened both their stomachs. Megatron’s hazy mind accepted that as permission, finally, to chase his own reward. He scooped up Rung’s hips and lifted him, pressing him tight, and began to thrust in earnest. 

Rung, whose softening cock must have been caught in the sudden assault, choked out a gasp and began to moan in earnest, each breath another _ah! nnng._

Megatron spilled himself just as Rung was really beginning to kick against him, the overstimulation probably having become unbearable. He let Rung settle back against the stone, and immediately Rung went limp, his huge blue-green eyes unfocused and his fingers half curled against his palms on the stone.

That was a job well done, Megatron decided. His strange new master wouldn’t be asking for more favors this night, if he was any judge.

Rung rolled his head to the side, or at least tried to—his yearling antlers scraped the stone where they bowed outward. He fixed Megatron with a bleary sidelong look.

“Pond,” he said. “We’re taking - a bath.”

Megatron frowned at him.

Rung squinted back at him and raised a hand between them, two fingers swiping through the stickiness on Megatron’s face that Megatron had almost managed to tune out entirely.

“I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of you,” Rung said, sounding oddly sheepish. 

Megatron wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. It sounded almost like an apology, although not one he remotely anticipated. Or understood.

Rung patted his shoulder, vaguely. “Come on,” he said, “I can’t move my legs, and you don’t seem to have a problem with moving me around however you like. Let’s take a bath.”

Hm. So much for no more favors. Still, Megatron could see the reason in it. He picked Rung up without too much effort and carried them both to the edge of the spring, where his clothes still lay in a pile from the night before. 

The water was cool, pleasantly so after the exertion of the evening. He waded in until Rung, in his arms, could simply float out of his grip, and then let him go. It was peaceful, for a few moments. Megatron scrubbed surreptitiously at the stains marking his body. Rung dove under the water with a smooth kick and didn’t surface for a long time. When he finally did surface, it was to sling his arms over the curve of a rock and contemplate Megatron from a distance, his large eyes peering warily over the stone.

“What?” Megatron said. He felt oddly more naked under that gaze than he had with Rung’s body bare under his own.

“You’re very experienced,” Rung said, “aren’t you? In lovemaking, I mean.”

Megatron wrinkled his nose. “ _Lovemaking,”_ he muttered.

“Isn’t that what humans call it?” Rung said. “It’s not mating, since we’re not mated, and it’s not breeding, since I can’t breed you. Fucking, maybe? I suppose it could be considered fucking. I’ve never been entirely sure about the difference.”

Megatron gave him an unimpressed look. “If you’re looking for more-”

“Oh no,” Rung said, quickly, “no, that was quite sufficient, you did a very - a very thorough job. I was only… wondering about you, I suppose. Where you’ve been. Who you are.”

Megatron said nothing. How to begin to summarize oneself to a wronged god? What could he say that wouldn’t make him seem laughably small, in comparison? 

“I don’t even know your name yet,” Rung prompted.

“...Megatron,” said Megatron, who felt again strangely naked now after all that he had done tonight. “It was Megatronus, once. I shortened it.”

“Megatron,” Rung repeated. “A name with honor. It suits you.”

Megatron looked away, scrubbing his palm against his oddly hot face.

Rung glided over, cutting smoothly through the water, and made himself at home in Megatron’s lap. “Here,” he said, “it’s too dried on, you’re not getting all of it.” 

His fingers pressed against Megatron’s jaw for a moment, and then began to work in firm, small circles. 


	2. Never, Never Canst Thou Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by the way, a true Greek satyr is actually a horse-human mashup, whereas a Roman faun is a goat-human combo. The two eventually got so blended together that the result is mostly we think of something looking like a faun as being a satyr. Rung is actually part deer, but basically in the style of a faun, so... now you know?

In the daylight, swift on his strange legs, Megatron mapped the deep recesses of the forest that he never had breached as a human.

The wind in the boughs, the calls of birds, all of it was transformed to new ears. The wilderness seemed less wild, its truth more apparent, its order less alien. Distantly, he was reminded of the grim clarity of the colosseum—there was no future here, only each moment in its unchangeable season.

“Did you have a nice day?” Rung asked him, perched once again on that stone at the edge of the spring. “Was it relaxing?”

Again, the transformation back had overtaken him as the last ray of daylight passed into twilight on the edge of the grove. Megatron, who did not want to admit that it had been _somewhat_ relaxing, stomped over to where Rung was seated and crossed his arms, taking a certain petty pleasure in looming so far above the small figure.

“No?” Rung said, “No conversation, then?” 

“If you want amusing conversation,” Megatron retorted, “entrap a courtesan next time, instead of a forester.”

“I think you have events thus far somewhat twisted,” Rung pointed out dryly.

Megatron _hmph_ ed. He rocked back on his heels and fixed his scowl on the distant treeline.

“I had a few things in mind that you might help me with tonight,” Rung said, “since you seem like you prefer to get right to it-”

Megatron whipped his gaze back around to Rung, who was watching him with guarded interest. The soft cock, blushing where its head peeked out from the foreskin, was cradled quite unassumingly against his thigh. Megatron forced his eyes back up from the sleek russet haunches. 

Rung noticed. He coughed awkwardly into his fist. “Er,” he said. “Well of course, I want to take your preference into account, regarding the, the,”

He bit his lip, cutting himself off with a quick shift of seating arrangement. This time, Megatron could not make himself look anywhere but down the length of Rung’s body. 

“Sorry,” Rung said, “I, er, I’m getting ahead of myself, or myself is getting ahead of me—ah—”

“Alright,” Megatron said. He was flushing up the back of his neck, for some reason, but he kept his face determinedly neutral.

Of course Rung wanted him, obviously, the situation in which he found himself spoke for itself. But to see such a considerable entity reduced to squirming and stumbling just by the thought of him—Megatron had never felt _that_ kind of power before.

There was something heady in it. His impulses went all jumbled, tripping over themselves, leaving him all stupid and over-cunning at once. Megatron had never been in the position of _seducer_ before. He had never been the one to invite another to make use of his body.

Heart thumping, hyper aware of his every move, Megatron set himself down on the grass and slid forward onto his forearms, arching his back to present himself. The grass was slightly slick with dew; his knees opened easily. How hard it would be to fight back, like this. How little control he had, over whatever Rung might want of him.

He had an impression of himself, of what he must look like: broad and hard-muscled, scarred, submitting like a cat in heat. Entrapped or entrapment—he hardly knew what he was in that moment. He all but held his breath, suspended in an eon of not-yet-knowing; would Rung admire him? Dismiss him? Reveal, perhaps, a new depth of cruelty thus far so delicately concealed?

The small of his back prickled, heat raced up the backs of his thighs.

He could hear, but he could not see, Rung slowly approaching him. The footsteps were uncertain, sidelong, as if Megatron were the dangerous one, rather than the god who held him in thrall.

There was a touch, the ghost of fingertips, at the base of Megatron’s spine. For a moment Rung only touched him, mapping his back, as if it were a thing such as he had never seen before.

“You’re so beautiful,” Rung murmured, “but this isn’t necessary. I have other tasks I could set you to. You’ve more than demonstrated your willingness.”

Megatron was struck by the odd sensation of being _annoyed_ by Rung’s apparent disinterest. “This isn’t what you want?” Megatron demanded. “This isn’t good enough for you?”

“No—I mean yes,” Rung said, “I mean—I don’t want to hurt you. And this seems like it would hurt.”

Megatron grimaced. It probably would, under these circumstances. For one thing, he was out of practice. And yet, he couldn't stop himself from imagining how Rung would feel, forcing his cock into Megatron, rough and sweetly moaning. As a youth, yet untried in the arena, Megatron had been used by older men from time to time. He knew from bitter practice that an inattentive stud was a misery to his victim. But he did not think Rung would be _inattentive._

There was a soft thump, as Rung knelt behind him. His hands moved up Megatron’s thighs and traced the shape of his back with a kind of gentle wonder. 

Megatron spread his legs wider and consequently brought the cleft of his ass firmly in line with Rung’s stirring cock. The hard, hot pressure there jerked against him. He smirked into his forearms. Not so disinterested after all, apparently.

Rung made a soft, tight noise, and clutched at Megatron’s waist. 

“I think you are still trying to kill me,” he said, brokenly, even as he rutted into the tender place between Megatron’s thighs. “Oh, Fates have mercy…”

The dry press of skin against skin teetered on the edge of too much, raw flinching pleasure, as Rung’s delicate balls rubbed over Megatron’s own.

“Go ahead already,” Megatron grunted. “You have me where you want me.”

“Do I?” Rung said, sounding slightly dazed. His fingers dug into Megatron’s scarred back, soft tips in hard muscle. He surged against Megatron once, hard, and let out a shuddery moan before forcing himself still. 

“You’ve done this before,” Rung murmured, “how did you do it…?”

Arousal prickled up Megatron’s spine, at the feeling of hardness rocking slowly into him. “Olive oil mostly,” he admitted. “Experience. Caution.”

“Well we’re missing two of three,” Rung laughed, breathlessly. The smile in his voice did strange things to Megatron’s stomach, and to other places. He rocked, lightly and sweetly, testing the new sensation—Megatron wished he could see how those eyes changed, whether the pupils swallowed the unearthly green, if the lashes fluttered.

The grass had a sweet, damp smell. Rung leaned his weight onto Megatron’s back, pressing him down into the earth a little tighter. 

“Muses give me words,” Rung said, running a hand down Megatron’s side as if admiring his shape. “I think you must have been made to please some wickeder god than I…”

The rocking against him was losing its lazy slowness, picking up a new urgency. A shaky, long hiss of breath escaped Rung as he pulled Megatron more tightly against him, bore down against him with more urgency. Megatron panted into the grass and the crook of his arm, feeling like some luxurious amusement for the faun’s benefit, mounted and ridden as Rung pleased.

“Hhck,” Rung gasped, and then, with a breathless “ _ah!”_ , spilled his pleasure between Megatron's legs. Wet and warm and thick, his come dripped over delicate flesh and down the length of Megatron’s own twitching cock. Rung relaxed, slumping over him, but Megatron remained as tense as a bowstring, thighs straining with the effort of holding himself still, hyper aware of the night and the grass and the throb of his swollen untouched cock.

Rung let out a sweet, quiet sigh. His fingers absently trailed back, down Megatron’s flank, and paused over a muscle flexing anxiously there. “Oh,” he said, “of course. Of course. Here… let me take care of you now.”

His fingers swept up under Megatron’s belly, finding his hardness, and gave it the most delicate stroke. Megatron flinched. It was the paradox of wanting _too_ much—as good as it felt, Megatron could hardly bear it.

“There you are…” Rung murmured, laying himself against Megatron’s back, cheek nuzzling into shoulder blade. “There you go… Mmm, relax, I have you…”

Megatron shuddered, fingers twisting in the grass, as Rung pumped his cock—the hand fine and small around Megatron’s aching girth. The pad of his thumb rolled over the head, smearing a little precum with a shivery coolness. His movements were unpracticed, fumbling a bit at first, but then with a smooth natural rhythm that grew faster and faster as Megatron started to lose composure underneath.

“How lovely you are…” Rung said. “How selfish of me to want to keep you like this…”

“ _Mm_ mnn,” Megatron said, helpless to change the pace of his pleasure in any way at all. His eyelids fluttered and then shut entirely.

It was both gentle and patient, Rung’s attention—and still, like this, Megatron was little more than a toy for Rung to amuse himself with. A pleasing diversion, a handsome thing that would moan and come whenever the master above him deigned it.

In all his years since that first victory, Megatron had never allowed himself to be so much in the power of another. Not to be held down, not to be dictated to, not to be played with. His pride could never have taken the sting. But with Rung, who held his human life in that soft, slick-streaked palm, how could Megatron be blamed for giving it up so easily?

“Go ahead,” Rung said, with something of a smile in his voice, “I have you right where I want you.”

\---

Some time after Megatron had collapsed into the grass, on his back, Rung came trotting back from the stones and sat at his side, delicate legs bent underneath him. With the same methodical care as the night before, he set to work cleaning the much smaller spatter of milky come from Megatron’s chest with a wet little rag he’d fetched from elsewhere.

His left hand rested at the arch of Megatron’s hip bone, half supporting himself, while his right hand worked in soothing circles over the nearer pectoral. The rough texture of cloth, cool with spring water, rubbed over the peak of that nipple and sent a twang of interest through Megatron’s groin.

He scowled and turned his face away, willing himself not to show undue interest. “Why are you doing that?” he demanded, looking fixedly at the rock jutting through the turf several feet away.

“Mm?” Rung’s swipes had wandered wider, tracing the faint definition of muscles now instead of any particular mess.

“I can wash myself,” Megatron said.

The rag paused in its motion. “Yes, I’m sure,” Rung said. “But isn’t this what people do? Take care of their lovers?”

“I’m not your lover,” Megatron retorted. “I’m your captive.”

The rag left a bright cold spot on Megatron’s bare skin as Rung sat back and considered him. “Well yes, I suppose you are.”

Megatron glanced up at him. There was a considering look on the faun’s face, mouth tipped faintly downward. The moon was bracketed between the prongs of his antlers, velvet-covered and rounded at each of the tips.

“That _is_ troublesome, isn’t it,” Rung said, at last. “But you’ll be free at the end of the month, so it’s less as though you’re enslaved here and more as if… as if you were ransomed for a while, in the household of a stranger.”

 _“If_ you actually intend to release me,” Megatron muttered.

Rung cocked an eyebrow at him. “You don’t think I will?”

“I don’t know you,” Megatron retorted, “how should I know if you’ll keep your word? Maybe you’ll come to find you like having a plaything easy to hand.”

His stomach twisted even as he said it, an awful mess of arousal and fear—to be kept and used, by someone so effortlessly capable of holding him captive, was both appealing and terrifying.

“Maybe you’ll do worse,” he added, darkly, thinking of broken pets and discarded toys.

Rung looked hard at him, antlers shifting across the lunar plane as his head tilted slightly. After a moment he stood again, and made his way back to the spring. In his absence, Megatron pushed himself upright in the grass.

“There’s always this problem with the coupling of divine and mortal,” Rung remarked, with a strange melancholy. “We are of such different orders, our understanding of each other rarely encompasses an entire truth.”

He folded himself down at the water’s edge, submerging the rag and then wringing it out with a smooth twist.

“Men are always trying to get something _out_ of spirits. A sense of meaning maybe—peace, sometimes, or purpose—or wealth, or favors, or vengeance…” The rag made a wet snapping sound as Rung flicked it open. “I think you must be the first mortal I’ve known who didn’t want something of me to begin with.”

He stood again, with damp rag in fist, fist planted on hip as he regarded Megatron with an unreadable expression.

“Where do you come from, Megatron?” he asked. "What kind of person are you?"

Megatron only returned his gaze with stony silence, chin up.

“While I have you, for what little time I have you, let me know something of you," Rung implored him. "Surely that’s not such a great request for any other man to make of you?”

“You want to be a man to me?”

“More than that,” Rung said, “but it’s a start.”

Megatron sneered. “We’ll see how long that lasts when I cease to be amusing to you,” he said. “When I do some other little thing you take offense to.”

Light-hooved, Rung picked his way through the glade and came back to crouch in front of Megatron, wrists resting loosely on thighs.

“You seem to have a very cynical outlook on human nature,” Rung said, with a self-deprecating smile, “or is it just mine?”

Silver flashed in the spring as a frog leapt from the banks behind him. There was the tiniest _plish_ from the water.

“I was a slave in Byzas,” Megatron said. “I was captured as a youth and sent across the continent to kill lions and other slaves for the amusement of a senator who kept a stable of fifteen other barbarians to fight on his behalf. I was lucky. I was handsome and fit and I knew how to hold a sword. Men less lucky than I died mining silver and hauling coal for the merchants who paid my senator’s salary.”

“Oh,” Rung said, a crease forming between his brows.

“Don’t pretend you’re sorry for me,” Megatron said, and leaned forward. “The world is full of sadder stories than mine. I was suited to the work, in ten years I won my freedom.”

“I don’t see why I can’t be sorry for you as well,” Rung said.

Megatron’s mouth twitched, and then he let his head tilt back, fixing his gaze on the velvet darkness above them. “I came back here looking for—I don’t know. The man who raised me might have survived the raid, I never saw his body. It was a fool’s errand, anyway. There’s nothing left of the place where I was raised except a dry well and some rotten timber.”

And no one left who spoke the language of his birth, although the town here spoke something like it, with the language of Byzas stirred in.

“The village was east of here?” Rung asked. “Built around a Donar Oak, wasn’t it?”

He had a thoughtful expression, when Megatron glanced back at him. “You know it?”

“Yes and no,” Rung said. “In the old days there were a number of villages like that. Some of your ancestors probably came to my worship, once.”

“Mm,” Megatron said. He could imagine it—before stone cities like the one where he sold his game, before the march of Byzas across the continent. He could see a shadow of a forgotten golden age in the architecture of his memory.

“Even if I had found a village waiting for me, somehow,” Megatron admitted, “after all these years, I doubt I could have called it home any more than Byzas. I’m too much of one to be a part of the other.”

“But still, you stayed here? You didn’t go back?”

“I was getting too old for the colosseum anyway,” Megatron said. He snorted. “One thing I promised myself, my first night in the stable: I’d never let myself die for anyone’s amusement. Spite kept me alive, I think, as much as skill.”

Rung made a soft, thoughtful noise.

“What?” Megatron said. “Do I not amuse you sufficiently?" He scowled. "Were you imagining some prettier history than this? Would you have preferred to seduce some tragic exile prince?”

Rung covered up a laugh with his fist, pretending it was a cough. Megatron scowled harder at him.

“No, ah, I was just thinking,” Rung said, “how strange it is—you grew up closer to me than to the capital of the empire by several magnitudes, and yet if you hadn’t been sold away as a child, I doubt you would ever have come so far as this forest, to find me here.”

“Hmm,” Megatron said.

“It is interesting, isn’t it?” Rung remarked. “The arbitrations of Fate? For all our powers, even gods are subject to its whims.”

Megatron scoffed. “I don’t believe in Fate,” he said.

“No?”

“I’m an atheist,” Megatron told him. “I don’t believe in destinies or any such superstition.”

“You’re _what?”_ Rung leaned forward. “In _my_ garden, you’re an atheist? After a day under my spells, you’re an _atheist.”_

“You may have some special powers,” Megatron dismissed, “but that doesn’t mean you’re my natural superior. I don’t believe in you, and therefore you have no rightful authority over me.”

Rung blinked at him. After a moment he sat back on his palms, with a bewildered smile.

“Megatron, my dear,” Rung said, “your hubris is _astonishing.”_

A frog croaked irritably, and with great vigor, under the clear silver light of the moon.

\---

At day’s end, for a third time, Megatron returned to the glade and found himself restored by the last ray of the setting sun. This time, Rung was not waiting for him.

Suspicious, Megatron ventured further into the clearing, circling the spring and ducking under the copse of flowering trees just beyond it. There was neither hide nor hair of his mysterious keeper anywhere. Just as he was squeezing himself between the trunks to peer deeper inside the thicket, there was a polite little sound like a throat clearing from behind him. He startled, tried to whip around, and promptly found himself in an undignified pile on the ground. Still, of course, very naked.

“Ah,” Rung said, visibly fighting a smile above him, “everything alright?”

“Fine,” Megatron grunted, and pulled himself upright. “Where have you been?”

Rung beamed. Megatron noticed for the first time that he was hiding something or other behind his back. When Megatron stalked closer, looming over the faun with his considerable bulk, Rung only tilted his chin up and kept smiling.

“What?” Megatron demanded.

Rung brought his hand around, quite neatly offering up a corked glass vial in which a pale green liquid glimmered in the twilight.

Megatron’s eyes widened. Blood thumped uncomfortably in its rush to get from one place to another, lower, place.

“You intend to fuck me,” he said, less of a question than a conclusion.

“Well it’s an option available to us now,” Rung said, judiciously. He held the vial up a little higher, offering it to Megatron. “If it meets your standards.”

Megatron snatched the little thing and held it up to the dwindling dusk sky. Yes. It certainly was the very substance he remembered. Even corked, the earthy scent of olives was unmistakable. It brought back a tumult of sensory memories: the slick stickiness of sweat, the rough pressure of burlap against a cheek, the damp wooden smell of the gladiators’ stable.

He could dash it across the stone right now, if he took a mind to. Part of him hated Rung for putting the power in his hand—for making him responsible for the next thing that happened, good or ill.

He closed the vial in his fist. Of course it was all just theater anyway; if he dashed this one on the rocks, Rung could acquire another with equal ease, or forgo the courtesy altogether. That same bitter part of him almost wished Rung _would_ hurt him—show him the limits of this farce—absolve Megatron of his desire with the purity of force.

Megatron sighed. He offered the vial back to Rung. “It’s good,” he said, simply.

Rung took it with careful fingers, and then held it delicately against his chest, where the pale flesh was a little flushed. “So,” he said, with a very carefully neutral tone, “would you like to?”

Megatron scowled. “Would _you?”_

“Ahh,” Rung said, and tapped a nail against the smooth glass with a nervous little _ting ting_. “Yes,” he said, “but look. We should really talk about this before it goes any further.”

Megatron eyed him warily. “Talk about _what?”_

“I’ve never, er,” Rung said. “That is to say, whereas you are extremely experienced in lovemaking, if I’m any judge, I myself would be considered... less so.”

“...How _much_ less so?”

“Well, not at all really, I’m afraid. It just never came up.”

Megatron opened his mouth. Megatron frowned. “You’re a fertility god.”

“That’s true,” Rung said, nodding along. “I am certainly what some people would consider a fertility god. Many lineages of cattle owe their existence to my intercession. It’s really more about treating the clap and removing tumors than anything else.”

Megatron pressed his fingers to his furrowed brow. “But you said you had a cult. And I’m certain you mentioned something about orgies.”

“Oh, well,” Rung flicked his hand dismissively, “it’s not that I’ve never _seen_ such things. But it always seemed like such a tricky proposition, getting involved with a mortal.”

Megatron just looked at him. Rung flushed.

“Some of the cultists were very _intense,"_ said the faun, lacing his fingers together. “And I haven’t had much luck with others of my kin. I tend not to be the popular type.”

“...I see.” Megatron considered this for several moments. “So you hoped to use me as a carnal education.”

Rung fidgeted. “Frankly, if you really want to know,” he said, “the idea hadn’t even crossed my mind. I was going to get you to help me in the garden.”

“In the garden,” Megatron repeated. “You wanted help. In the _garden."_

“There’s a very large tree that fell on the stream this summer and I can’t lift it by myself,” Rung said. “You seemed as if you were suited to heavy lifting.”

Megatron stared at him.

“You’ve done wonderfully as a lover!” Rung hurried to reassure him. “Really, I’ve enjoyed it immensely! But I didn’t, er, ever actually ask you to do that.”

“You certainly didn’t stop me!”

“Nnnno,” Rung said, “I did not. You’re dreadfully good looking.” He coughed into his fist, avoiding Megatron’s eye. “And you caught me off guard, the first time.”

“What’s your excuse for the second time?” Megatron demanded.

Rung blinked at him. “Well you seemed as if you rather expected it,” he said.

“I can’t believe this,” Megatron said. He felt an overwhelming need to sit down, _immediately._

“You’re upset with me,” Rung said, looking pensive. He pressed his knuckles to his lip and stroked the corner of his mouth with the pad of his thumb. “I was trying to tell you last night, but you were so—intense.”

“I thought you were saying you hadn’t taken a man before,” Megatron said, face cupped in his palm.

“Correct,” Rung said, “but additionally…”

Megatron sighed. He felt foolish, but Rung wasn’t taking any of his baiting to fight, and lashing out at someone so gently apologetic would only make him feel more the fool now—

“I shouldn’t have let myself get so carried away,” Rung said. “I’ve had humans offer before, but… never like that. I feel as though even storm gods would wreck themselves against the rocks to touch you.”

A flush of flattery lit Megatron’s belly, and was immediately swallowed by a prickle of resentment. There was silence for a moment, as Rung was apparently waiting for him to say something. Megatron cast about for something to say, but what _could_ he say to pretty words like that?

His mouth twisted; he turned his head. “In the empire they would have said it was my natural position,” he said. “Anticipating a need is the mark of a good slave.”

“That must be a very convenient outlook,” Rung said, frowning, “from the point of view of someone who owns a slave.”

“In the empire,” Megatron said, “they don’t know what they want from gladiators. We’re not of Byzas, so we aren’t really people—but we’re paragons of strength, of victory. They find us beautiful. And they loathe us for being beautiful, but beneath them.”

Rung levered himself up and settled himself onto a neighboring stone, graceful despite the fact that he had not looked away from Megatron once the whole time.

“I would never have made a good servant,” Megatron said. He grimaced. “They were smart to put me in the arena right away. I was popular enough there despite my insolence.”

“You had many admirers?” Rung asked.

Megatron snorted. “If that’s what you’d call the type of citizen who carves _here_ _Marcus mounted the beast of Kaon_ into a colosseum wall.”

“Oh dear,” Rung said.

“It was a lie, of course,” Megatron said, “wishful thinking on his part, whoever he was. Still, it says something about Byzas—the only thing they like better than to raise a savage up is to force him back down again. Preferably to his knees.”

“I begin to see,” Rung said, with a certain grimness.

“Do you?” Megatron retorted.

Rung’s fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the stone at his hip. “You offered yourself to me because you are accustomed to being treated like a pleasure object by men in positions of power. You did not actually want me to touch you. In retrospect, your actions and words were not aligned. I should have realized much sooner.”

There was a distance in Rung’s words, now, and in his voice—a cool neutrality, which Megatron found discomfiting. He was used to the warm, at times sweet, tones the faun had used on previous nights. This Rung was much more the otherworldly observer, impartial, remote. Much more the creature who had cursed him for his reckless trespasses. 

A prickle went up Megatron’s spine. Perhaps the truth was too offensive; he had spoiled Rung’s fantasy, and there might yet be retribution for daring to speak so candidly. Megatron had been rebuked for his sharp mouth before.

They looked past each other, uncomfortable in a silence that stretched on too long.

Rung rocked back on his palms, then crossed his legs neatly in front of him. “I won’t force you to act the concubine,” he said.

“…You won’t.”

“No, of course not.” Rung shook his head. “I’m sure you’ve had your fill of being eroticized by strangers.”

Megatron’s mouth pulled unhappily, but he wasn’t entirely sure why.

“I’ll leave it in your hands,” Rung went on. “I may be your master for now, but I’m not your owner. There’s always the tree in the river, you know, and a thousand other little tasks I could use another set of hands on. You have your choice in how you serve me. Say the word, and we’ll speak no more of anything but the most chaste matters for the rest of the month.”

Megatron clenched his fists. He looked from Rung to the little glass vial sitting on the smooth stone beside his hand, its green tint no longer clear in the falling twilight. “You really think I believe that?” Megatron said.

“I’m not going to force myself on you,” Rung said. “Some gods would, I’m sure, but they’re not here. I have no desire to see you hate me. And I can’t imagine you wouldn’t hate me, if I were to misuse you so badly.”

Megatron set his jaw. He was all flushed, ready for—for— _something._ “Fine,” he said, “fine then. I won’t let you touch me again.”

For a brief, terrible moment, Rung only looked at him. Expressionless, his doe eyes luminescent in the dark. Megatron’s blood thrummed in his ears. And then, with the utmost grace, Rung uncross his legs and lay his hands, palm down, over the inhuman bend of his knees.

“That’s that, then,” he said, and stood up.

He stepped back, waiting patiently for Megatron to follow his lead. When Megatron did not, he held out his hand and curled his fingers invitingly.

“Come here,” he said, gently. “I’ll show you the river. It’s quite pretty, under better circumstances. I thought we might have to do some cutting, the trunk is really very considerable, but I’ll help.”

Unsure what else to do, Megatron got up after him. Rung gave him an encouraging look.

“It’s this way,” he said, hooves skating neatly backward through the grass. “We have plenty of time to sort it out. Why don’t you tell me about Byzas? I confess I don’t know much about city life. It seems just yesterday to me that everyone was still using stone tools.”

Dizzied, feeling dumb and off-kilter, Megatron opened his mouth mutely and then shut it. Rung kindly did not remark on this. The walk down to the river was indeed beautiful, full of starlight and carpeted in white petals. After some time, just to fill the silence, Megatron began to speak about Byzas—at first about its shape and structure, and then more, at Rung’s request, about his own impression of it, about the smell and the sound—

About how he had learned to read under the quiet watchguard of the senator’s secretary, who was himself a freedman—

And all the time Megatron waited for Rung to press his suit at last, in some way even small or sly. But dawn rolled steadily closer and still Rung said nothing—suggested nothing—made no meaningful gesture—

And by the first light of morning Megatron was all a knot with it, untouched and unravished, left very graciously to face the twilight alone. 


	3. that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here's the music I looped while working on this fic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_BcivBprM0&list=PL18Z5FjZ7wjN62CIL-sHx4c2oMSyUK7XH)  
> 

“-Am I prying too much? You don’t have to tell me about your Senator. I’m sorry, my manners must be going rusty.”

“Don’t get many visitors?”

“Not many, no.”

“Might help if you didn’t curse them with hooves the second they arrived.”

“It might help if they didn’t _shoot_ at me the second they arrived.”

“...”

“...”

“...You don’t have the odd pilgrims passing through, then?”

“Oh… no. Nature cults just really aren’t what the youth are into these days, I’m afraid. They like aqueducts and things. Mechanical whatsits.” 

“Hmm. If no one believes in you anymore-”

“Oh, I exist regardless of whether anyone believes in me.”

“But they _used_ to.”

“Certainly. The good old days, if you’ll forgive me some rose tinted nostalgia. We used to have a lot of fun, you know. Every full moon there were festivities in the glade. Humans drinking and singing and… er, becoming better acquainted. Wine and smoking juniper. They would take hands and go whirling about the fire. They looked like they were having _such_ a good time.”

“Looked?”

“Mm. Well you can’t really be _friends_ with your worshippers, can you?”

“I don’t know. Can you?”

“...No. You really can’t.” 

\---

Once again Megatron arrived in the grove at sunset. He had spent the day racing through the ravines and hills until he was frothed with sweat, unwilling to still himself for more than a moment, restless under the high green canopy.

Rung was waiting for him again, this time, although at a longer distance than usual. He was at the far edge of the spring, fingers unpicking the knot he’d made of some snare he was weaving, his usually deft fingers fumbling with the threads. He did not notice Megatron approaching until Megatron was nearly at the edge of the rocks, and then he startled, accidentally pulling a thread out of the weave in his jolt.

“Megatron!” he said, and then, “You, er, you had a nice day?”

“...Yes,” Megatron lied, too taken aback to consider a more cutting answer.

“Good, that’s good,” Rung said. “I’m glad to… hear it…”

He seemed to notice his weaving again, all at once, and hastily shoved it aside. He got up, brushed a leaf from his sleek fur, and avoided Megatron’s gaze.

“Let’s not dawdle,” he said, turning sharply towards the ravine that held the problematic stream. “Moonlight is wasting, after all.”

Megatron was excruciatingly conscious of his own nakedness as he followed Rung down into the river. Of course he had been naked the entire time, but now, with the previous night hanging over his head—even the graze of wind against his skin felt maddening.

Rung had retrieved, for their work, one very strangely crafted axe which nonetheless functioned as well as any other for the task. Having cleared the debris from around the mud-logged trunk the night before, Megatron set about carving off limbs and knots that might drag against the river bed. It was physical work, hard enough in its way, but the river around his thighs was cold and the summer was muted with the onset of night. 

Rung sat on the bank, watching him with an uninterpretable expression, occasionally rising to carry away some limb or another that Megatron had chopped free. His gaze on Megatron’s back itched worse than anything else. Megatron was doubly aware of himself, conscious of his insides and outsides at once. Of what he must look like, barebacked and working, wet up to the tops of his thighs with river water. When he paused, ostensibly to work out a kink in his shoulder, and glanced back, Rung quickly turned his gaze away.

It was miserable. Not the work, which was not any different from Megatron’s regular chores around the homestead, but the excruciating tension of the air over them.

At last, as Megatron was standing back to observe his handiwork, axe on his shoulder, Rung cleared his throat. Ice and lightning shot Megatron’s veins; to his private humiliation, his cock twitched.

“What?” Megatron snapped, twisting to look over his shoulder at the figure on the river bank. 

Rung’s expression went alarmed, and then slightly wounded. He cleared his throat again, and patted the grassy bank beside himself. “Take a break,” he said. 

“...Oh,” Megatron said.

He waded out, set his axe down, and gingerly picked out a spot on the grass that was barely just beyond Rung’s reach. Rung did not look at him. They both considered the river, the far bank, the white corona of the moon.

“You were telling me about the poetry,” Rung said, “last night, I mean. About the reading Soundwave brought for you?”

“Yes,” Megatron said.

“And you were saying something about a woman poet,” Rung pressed. “I didn’t know women published poetry.”

“They don’t, usually,” Megatron said. “She’s unusual.” 

“Do you remember any of it…?” Rung asked. His suggestion was almost fragile in the air.

Megatron pressed his mouth into a line. The black silhouette of a bat broke above the forest canopy. The memory came back to him easily, full of candle smoke and tallow. 

“For if she flees, soon she shall pursue. If she refuses gifts, rather she shall give them. If she does not love,” said Megatron, “soon she will love, even unwilling...”

The back of his neck flushed hot. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rung’s fingers twitch in the grass. “Go on,” Rung said, with something Megatron might almost call strain in his voice.

Megatron’s throat knotted itself inside him; it took another precious moment to unknot and finish. “Come to me now. Loose me from hard care, and all my heart’s longings to accomplish, accomplish. You,” he said, “be my ally.”

In his periphery, Megatron caught the uncomfortable bobbing motion as Rung swallowed dry. 

“Well,” Rung said. And then he said nothing else.

The pressure of the night was unbearable. Megatron was glad to go back to work. 

\---

Perhaps it was a restless longing for his own life that drove Megatron out past the deep oaks and closer to the village.

Nothing would quite shake the itching worries from his head—how was the clay seal in his window holding up against the weather? Had the local children tried to break in yet, as they were always lurking about, hoping to do? He had valuable brass and iron tools, good stoneware, blankets and things that he had paid for in sweat and, to greater and lesser degrees, in blood. One was never so well off that their good fortune couldn’t be undone in a single careless blow.

If he ever got free of this blasted curse, would there be any home left for him to return to?

At the edge of the forest he blinked at the sunlight through the thinning canopy, his animal brain shying desperately away even as his human brain urged him forward. His hooves skittered sideways through the underbrush, caught between equally strong impulses.

There was a crack, in the underbrush. Like an inexperienced hunter mistaking their next step. _Precisely_ like it. Megatron swung his head around, and in the breadth of a second his eyes picked out the shifting of something heavy among the brush, the glint of sunlight on metal-

The _whump_ of an arrow hitting Megatron’s side echoed through the drum-hollow of his body. Megatron had been slashed before, had been hit with clubs and hammers and stabbed with pikes, but he’d never felt the blow of a forty pound draw directly against his ribcage. The animal in him blazed with panic. The Megatron in him blazed with rage.

He staggered, hooves scattering leaves, and then he lowered his antlers and snorted. He charged the brush, horrifying the hunter so badly that the man scrambled back on his hands and threw himself up the side of the ravine to escape the stampede. His arrow bag lay forgotten in the brambles.

Megatron breathed heavily, snorting and swaying as his already fuzzy vision grew still more indistinct. Shit and hellfire. Of all the ways for a man with his life to die, shot in the ribs by an idiot in the woods wouldn’t have topped his list. His side was white hot with pain, the hide torn, and all of his organs thumping unpleasantly inside of him.

The beast of the Kaon pit… dead like a beast, unmarked, unmourned…

He staggered back into the cool dark of the forest, his beast mind taking comfort in it, even as his human mind took grim stock of the hot trail his blood was leaving across the forest floor.

He could have died—so many times—in the empire—in the colosseum—in that first accursed raid, in the smoke and the wreckage—

Somehow his stumbling hooves carried him to the edge of the garden grove, verdant and sunlit, where he crashed finally to his knees in the fragrant grass. How long he lay there, foamed with sweat and panting, only heaven knew. The weight of antlers, which had never bothered him before, felt like an unbearable pressure on his body.

At some length, a cool hand-shaped pressure on his flank roused him from his miserable dizziness. He flinched, or tried to—seated as he was, there was no real way to escape the probing touch, and he found as he tried to swing his antlers at the threat that lifting his head had become almost impossible.

“Oh, _Megatron,_ ” the soft voice said.

Megatron glared back at the fuzzy edge of Rung, which he could only just see. Of course. Of course his captor would want to be here to witness Megatron’s greatest humiliation. His just deserts, no doubt, for the great crime of daring to exist in the same world as his natural superiors, of which there seem to be an endless number.

“Oh Megatron,” the faun murmured, “I’m so sorry…”

Hah, _sorry._ Sorry he hadn’t been there to see it, maybe. As if this wasn’t always what he meant to happen, as if this wasn’t always how it ended for men like Megatron, playthings of some careless petty power far beyond their reach.

Damn Megatron for forgetting that things always do get worse; damn Rung for playing at tenderness until Megatron had almost believed in it.

“Where…” the hand on his flank shifted, prodding closer to the red hot center of pain.

Megatron kicked and snorted and managed to topple himself sideways onto the grass with a _whumph_ of impact, but no matter how his legs kicked, he couldn’t get himself out from under the god’s shadow. Rung avoided all the thrashing with poise and grace, moving in closer instead of away.

“Shh, please, stop moving around. You’re making it worse.”

Megatron huffed angrily and let himself slump, antlers scoring the dirt.

“I can fix this,” Rung said. “It’s going to be alright.”

Megatron rolled an eye back and stared narrowly at Rung. The fuzzy visage had a certain tenseness to the features, maybe, for all that Megatron could barely make it out.

Rung took a deep breath and laid both hands on Megatron’s side. “It’s going to be alright,” he repeated.

Warmth. A warmth like golden light in autumn, slanting through the afternoon, began just underneath Rung’s down-pressed palms. It swept across his flank, overtaking the wound, and soon every inch of flesh was euphoric with the echo of Rung’s touch.

It was the shifting of grass beneath him that made Megatron belatedly aware—the dragging of limbs over the turf as he became smaller, the growing prickle of leaves—he was changing again.

At last he lay in the grass, himself again, as Rung reached up and tenderly thumbed the sweat from beneath his eye.

The sky above them was a dusty blue, the rising moon like a pale scar on the flesh of the day. The forest smelled of some wildflower, distantly busy with the quiet hum of bees.

“There,” Rung said, quietly. “That should be quite alright.”

And it was. Nothing remained of the mortal wound save a tingle of Rung’s magic, and the frenzied thump of Megatron’s heart—not yet aware that the danger was past. He was whole. 

“I _was_ principally a fertility god,” Rung said, “but petitioners came to me quite often for other healing as well. I’m a trick hand at ulcers too, I don’t mind saying.”

Trembling, Megatron reached down and felt for the wound across his ribs. There was nothing there, not even the ropy knots of his scars from past floggings.

“Careful,” Rung said, pressing his hand down atop Megatron’s. “You’ll be dizzy for a moment longer. Don’t try to get up.”

Megatron coughed, and then in a ragged voice, said, “What’s the catch?”

“Pardon?”

“This was my—my _cosmic_ _justice_ , whatever you’d call it, so—why bother healing me? What’s the catch?”

“Ah,” Rung said. He pulled his hand back, and then he stood. For a moment Megatron was overtaken with dread of a nameless fate, worse yet than this one.

“Well as it happens,” Rung said, “there is a bit of a catch, if you’d like to call it that.”

“What?” Megatron demanded. “Tell me!”

Rung tilted his head up towards the dusty afternoon sky. “There’s a certain order to these things, you know. Day and night. Curses have a structure to them.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I suppose Fate has its own sense of _cosmic justice._ You’re free to go.”

Megatron sat bolt upright, and then clutched at his middle as nausea shot through him. “I’m _what?”_

“I broke the curse,” Rung said, simply. “I had to, to change you back during the day. Anyway, I think you’ve been punished enough. You’re as free now as you were the first time you entered these woods. You can go as you like.”

Palm still pressed to his abdomen, Megatron looked up at Rung. There was a certain sadness to his affect, despite the little smile.

“A pity,” Rung said, and turned abruptly away. “I was hoping for a bit longer to get to know you. But that’s only selfish, isn’t it? I suppose it’s for the best to end it now, if I’m only doing it for my own sake…”

At the edge of the spring, he pushed apart a pair of stones and came up with Megatron’s clothing, the white linsey-woolsey folded neatly over his arm.

“Hopefully you learned a lesson from all this,” Rung said. “You seem like an honorable man. Maybe even a good man, if you can temper that cynicism with some compassion. I hope one day you find a home that suits all you are.”

He held out Megatron’s clothing. Hesitating, still waiting for the trap to spring, Megatron finally reached out and took them. No iron jaws snapped shut around him.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Rung said.

Megatron stepped back.

His heart seemed swamped with fear and hope and a bitterness that made no sense. If Rung wanted to keep him, why did Rung not simply put the curse back on him? But then, nothing that Rung had done so far in all the days Megatron had known him had been what Megatron expected.

“Goodbye, then,” Megatron said.

“Goodbye,” Rung said, with a half smile.

Megatron made his way out of the depths of the forest as if in a daze, his boots crunching clumsily through the same paths that swifter hooves had taken in soundless sweeps. Birds startled from his passage. He hardly noticed the forgotten arrow in the leaves, rolling away from the scuff of his toe as he trod through the underbrush.

Daylight greeted him on the other side. He lifted a hand to his forehead to shield off the glare of the sun. Nothing, he felt, was the same here as when he left it.

\---

Megatron’s cottage, which he rented from a landlord in the town, showed only minor signs of having been investigated by local children. His few chickens had escaped, or else been stolen. The dust was no worse than when he left it.

In the gloom, Megatron pulled the last of the week’s bread out of the cabinet and ate it with cold butter, sitting at his one chair by the chest that doubled as a table. It was quiet, and the quiet had a kind of musty quality, like bedding not yet aired out after the summer. Megatron was poor, but it had never bothered him before—he had no one to support, and had never been accustomed to luxury even as a boy. The little house suited him fine. He wasn’t certain what made him so unhappy with it now.

His thoughts wandered back to the grove, the figure of Rung wan and smiling, a hand open in silent farewell.

What would Rung be doing now in that flowering oasis among the shadows? Would he think at all of Megatron? Foolish to ask. What was a matter of days, after all, to a thing that called itself a god?

Megatron stood, abruptly. His chair squealed across the splintering wooden floor. He took up his hatchet and stalked out the back door, toward the wood pile.

He couldn’t possibly have _enjoyed_ being Rung’s plaything. Or had he been a plaything? The word weighed wrong against the sum of his strange, brilliant nights—Rung’s gentle hands, his quiet interest, his ultimate confession. But if not a plaything, what else could a mere mortal (a freedman, a tenant, a common forester) be to an immortal being whose domain was the wilderness? Who altered nature itself with a snap of his fingers?

 _Crack._ The head of his hatchet split wood and buried itself in the stump below. Megatron scowled and readjusted his grip.

In Byzas, in the senator’s stable, Megatron had lain with a number of other gladiators. Some from his own household, some from the households of other politicians. Some of them had their own foreign ways of approaching sex; Megatron himself had been taken from his home young enough that he knew very little of his own people’s approach to it. Byzas itself tended to view things in hierarchy—an older man might approach a younger man, or a man approach a woman, or a better ranked citizen approach a less well situated one. Slave and master alike, everyone had something to prove, and they proved it at times with high-handed selfishness.

Once Megatron had risen through the ranks of gladiators, for the most part it had been expected that he would stud anyone who invited an approach from him. But that didn’t mean he had forgotten those first years, the cutthroat jostling for rank, the cruel demonstrations of power. Senator Ratbat had occasionally sampled his merchandise—even at the height of his success, even as champion, Megatron could still be called upon to submit himself to the pleasure of his owner at any time.

And he had held his breath, when the senator’s silent secretary passed through the gates to the barracks, wondering—fearing—anticipating—

Megatron realized he had been motionless for several minutes, axehead buried in the stump. He let go of the handle, flexing his stiff hands.

Had he ever chosen someone freely? Or had it always been an obligation, an expectation, a _demand?_

Well. He’d chosen with Rung, hadn’t he? He’d chosen to say no.

Suddenly energized, Megatron yanked the axe out of the stump and set up the next log to be cut. Yes. He’d said no to Rung, because he didn’t want to be ogled and fondled and called _my dear._ He didn’t want to see those luminous eyes blinking slowly at him. He didn’t want to hear Rung’s stories or ease his loneliness. He didn’t want to be, what had Rung said, he didn’t want to be treated like a pleasure object. It would be shameful, to want something like that.

Megatron’s muscles burned as he split log after log. He didn’t want to service Rung, or to suck his cock, or to be opened up by his slim delicate fingers. He didn’t want to moan Rung’s name, or gasp as Rung cradled his balls and almost-but-didn’t-quite squeeze. He didn’t want to see Rung underneath him, his face twisted in ecstasy as Megatron rode him to completion.

The stroke of the axe was unsteady, landing only a glancing blow that splintered the wood without splitting it. Megatron set down the axe before he could do himself harm with it. He was very aware of the thudding of his heart in his chest and the throbbing of his cock in his trousers.

He bent, and began to gather up the wood. By the time it was all stacked, his heart had slowed and his cock was soft again.

\---

Birds scattered into the sky as Megatron bore down on the treeline, hatchet in hand and bag thrown over his back. He took the deer trail without hesitation, the forest paths now as familiar and clear to his mind as the floor of his own house. Shadows cast his travel in dreamlike twilight. Pines gave way to hardwoods, hardwoods gave way to the flowering trees of the faun’s glade, and then sunlight broke again across his nose as the water and the copse beyond it came at last into view.

He remembered too well the racing of his heart, when Soundwave appeared unexpectedly on the threshold of the stable. That moment of wondering, trying to divine from the freedman’s stoic face what type of errand this would be—what kind of summons—for whom—

Megatron’s heart raced now, the same heat and speed as those heady bad and good and awful days, but the feeling that gripped him when he saw Rung’s slender figure among the rocks, turning, turning, eyes going wide as they fixed upon Megatron…

Chin up, Megatron dropped his sack on the grass beside him.

“I won’t suffer you to turn me back into any kind of animal,” he said. “And if you expect human company, you need assets fit for human habitation.”

Above his spring-water green eyes, Rung’s brows furrowed.

“Rolling in the grass is fine in the summer,” Megatron went on gruffly, “but it’ll be getting cold soon, and besides that there’s always the possibility of rain, and while you may think you can cure a fever, I would rather not have to find out.”

Rung picked his way closer, hooves sidelong across the ground, almost as if he were a beast on the verge of bolting. “You must not have understood me,” he said, ducking a little closer. “Your obligation to me is lifted. You’re free. You don’t have to come back here.” 

“Ha, you think you could make me?” Megatron crossed his arms in front of him. 

“I don’t understand,” Rung said. “Then why are you back?”

Megatron’s heart thumped. To compensate for the flush he could feel creeping over his face, he scowled. 

“You said you think I’m an honorable man,” he said. “I think you must be one too. And the world is short on men who know the difference between what’s right and what pleases them.”

He uncrossed his arms and picked the hatchet up by its well worn handle, fixing his attention on the sweat-polished wood rather than Rung’s expression. There was an order of courtship he was accustomed to. Unjust though it might be, there was a hierarchy in whose pleasure mattered. Rung had thrown all his jaded certainty into disarray.

“I have no interest in vengeful lovers,” Megatron said, without looking at him, “but you let me go once, and I think you would let me go again.”

“Yes,” Rung said, hoarsely, “of course.”

Megatron looked up. Rung was frozen in his tracks, a trembling almost like fear about him.

“God or no god,” Megatron said, “I come to you like any admirer comes to the doorstep of their admired. I think I would like to touch you. I think I would like to know you more. Will you let me?”

Rung reached out, and let the tips of his fingers come to rest over Megatron’s grip on the hatchet. “I thought you must hate me,” he said, “for letting you come to harm like that. For taking your freedom from you a second time.”

Megatron looked down, to the slight tremor of Rung’s fingers, and then back up to the faun’s face. “Don’t ask me what I feel,” he said, “it’s all a snarl of briars to me. But I’m not ready to be forgotten by you yet.”

“I thought about you all day,” Rung confessed, “I worried—I wished—”

Megatron let the hatchet fall aside, sweeping Rung up off the ground and pinning him instead against his own chest. Rung immediately lifted his hands and framed Megatron’s face with his fingers, to better study it.

“What would you like of me?” Rung said. “Let’s try this again, from the start. You can have anything you want.”

Megatron’s mouth twitched against a frown. This was the part where he ought to say he’d have Rung against the grass, right here, the way a suitor should. A position suited to his strength and physical power.

“Anything?” he asked.

“I think it’s only fair,” Rung replied, conscientiously. 

With Rung’s body cupped in both hands—one flattened against the delicate knotwork of his spine, the other supporting underneath him—Megatron dropped to his knees and then laid Rung under him on the grass, their mouths only a breath apart.

If he wanted something, why not take it?

Megatron pressed a kiss to Rung’s lips. He had some familiarity with how the thing should go, and he pursued it with single minded intent, moving against the soft warmth until Rung parted his lips and began to kiss back. The hand that Megatron had kept on Rung’s hip shifted now, searching out the faun’s rapidly swelling hardness, already warm to the touch.

When Megatron closed his fist around it, Rung arched into the kiss with a groan. He was so beautiful, so strange and so lovely, with his willing mouth and his wanting flesh. 

Megatron stood up, unbuckling his belt, and then paused to consider their situation. “Where did you store that oil you had?” he asked.

“Same rock where I had your clothes,” Rung said, breathless.

It was the work of a moment to retrieve it; when Megatron came back to him, Rung had his cock closed in his hand, worrying the foreskin with his thumb as he tracked Megatron across the glade. Shameless, thought Megatron, oddly shameless for someone who had so many other reservations.

Megatron made quick work of his own clothes, tossing them aside with little concern for where they landed. All the while, Rung looked up at him as if he was a wonder, as if he were some muse or hero, irresistible and worthy of devotion. Megatron felt heady with it, ten feet tall and invulnerable.

Megatron settled with his knees spread on either side of Rung, his own cock tracing a heavy arc in the air.

“You don’t know how to do this, so I’ll take charge,” Megatron informed him. 

Rung’s hands clutched at Megatron’s thighs, slim and delicate against the powerful and pronounced width of muscle. “Whatever you say,” he agreed. 

“Hmm,” Megatron said. “Are you sure about that? I might have quite a lot to say.”

“And I’d love to hear it,” Rung said, with a warmth that made Megatron, in all his experience, abruptly self-conscious. He looked away, fervently reminding himself that this was no time to get weak in the knees. This was supposed to be going somewhere.

Megatron cleared his throat sharply. “Lay still,” he said, gruffly, “and I’ll make sure you get what you need.”

Obligingly, Rung let his hands fall back against the grass at either side of his head, fingers loosely curled.

The green smell of olives broke the air between them, as Megatron uncorked the vial and slicked up Rung’s flushing cock. Rung buried his teeth in his lower lip, digging his fingers into his own palms. Megatron played with him for a moment, indulging himself in the desire to watch foreskin roll back from the pink cockhead, to hear the strangled moan, to feel Rung pushing up against him. 

He prepped himself much more perfunctorily, impatient to get back to handling Rung the way his purring furnace of a heart demanded. But in the moment he thought to look back at Rung, to check on his remaining state of patience, he found Rung riveted by the whole spectacle of Megatron: twisted back, on his knees and supported by one hand, working oil into the tight clench of his own body. Megatron paused, startled, and stared at Rung. It had not occurred to him that what he was doing might be _alluring_ as well as necessary.

“Is this what you like?” Megatron asked, arching a little bit to see how Rung responded. “To see me touch myself for you?”

“I,” Rung said, only belatedly tearing his eyes away from Megatron’s ass, “-yes. Yes is the, um, answer to the question.”

Surprise turned into warm smugness. Megatron smirked down at him, letting his weight shift from his palm to his forearm. Rung’s eyes widened. Their faces were only a little space apart now; the arch of Megatron’s back was a deep, wanton curve.

“That can’t be all you want,” he said. 

Rung’s tongue darted out to wet his lip. “Honestly I could watch this all night,” he said, with understated frankness.

Megatron went hot up the back of his neck, and then cursed this damnable weakness for flattery that he hadn’t known he had.

“Are you sure you want to do it this way?” Rung asked him, taking his silence for some kind of warning. “I told you, you don’t have to-”

“I want this,” Megatron snapped. “Don’t try to talk me out of it, I’ve done enough of that myself.”

“Oh...” Rung’s hands settled delicately on Megatron’s hips. “But is this something you _want,_ truly? For your own pleasure, not only mine?”

Megatron felt like he was burning, from Rung’s careful touch, from the hot pumping of his blood. His cock was achingly hard.

“Come on,” said Rung, coaxingly. “I won’t pester you for sweet words, but some assurance that this act is welcome would be-”

“I want you inside of me,” blurted Megatron, and then his jaw clamped and he couldn’t look Rung in the face. His gaze dropped to Rung’s lightly-furred chest. He had freckles there, scattered over his soft skin. Megatron would rather write an ode to them than speak one more word about ‘this act.’

“Then,” said Rung, one hand coming up to tip Megatron’s chin towards him, “you shall have me.”

Every minute distance between them was suddenly too much to bear. Megatron surged forward, catching Rung’s mouth with his. Rung moaned, and his hands clutched at Megatron’s ass, spreading the cheeks and exposing Megatron’s oil-slick hole. Both of them fumbled for Rung’s cock, unwilling to part for even a moment. Rung thrust up against him, sliding fruitlessly against the cleft of Megatron’s ass, until finally Megatron managed to tear himself away. He rose up on his knees, one hand steadying Rung’s cock, the other spreading himself. He looked down at Rung’s awed face.

And then he sank down.

The ache of it knocked the breath out of Megatron, who had remembered the feeling only as a vague longing in moments of furtive self-pleasure, wishing for something _more._ The stretch he wasn’t used to anymore; something not-quite-pain but reminiscent of it, the way that smoke tastes of fire. 

Rung whimpered. Megatron opened his eyes—when had he closed his eyes—and looked back down at the slight creature he had pinned to the earth.

“Alright?” he managed. He couldn’t imagine why it wouldn’t be, but Rung’s expression was hard to interpret. 

The chin was tipped back, throat bared, and the apple of his throat bobbed as he dry swallowed. It took Rung a moment to gather himself enough to answer, “—Fine.”

Megatron cocked a brow at him. Rung colored significantly, and turned his head to the side. The tip of his gently pointed ear was also pink.

Although Megatron had taken bigger, probably, Rung was proportioned considerably for his otherwise slimness of frame. Megatron supposed it came with the territory of being a fertility god. In any case, there was a heavy fullness to the girth inside Megatron’s body, a delicious pressure that made it hard to think about anything else. He shifted, experimentally. A hot line of fire shot up his spine.

“Oh _gods,”_ he panted. 

His hand closed around his own cock, squeezing just a fraction past the point of pleasure, his callouses rough around the swollen flesh. It felt hot in his hand, and he couldn’t tell if that throbbing pulse was in his palm or in the weight of his member. He shuddered.

“You really are marvelous,” Rung said, stroking down one of Megatron’s thighs.

Megatron opened an eye and snorted. “Any two bit whore with a slick enough hole could do this,” he said.

Rung let out a little strangled noise. His body seemed to like the crude talk, but at the same time, his mouth was making an unhappy twist.

“I’m not talking about them,” Rung replied. “I’m talking about you. And I think you’re marvelous.”

“You—Stop complimenting me!” Megatron said, feeling very betrayed by the way his cock twitched in his hand. “I’m trying to get you off!”

Rung let out a little breathless laugh and let his hands rest easily over Megatron’s folded knees. “So I shouldn’t tell you that you’re eros in flesh, desire made manifest?”

 _“No,”_ Megatron said.

“What about your magnificent thighs,” Rung said, “shall I refrain from comparing them to a stallion’s, then?”

“You’re on thin fucking ice,” Megatron said, and ground his ass against Rung’s hips. The faun wheezed, caught between laughter and gasping. 

“Beautiful,” Rung said, fondly, grinning up at Megatron, “as if summer itself was a man.”

“I thought I was the one with the poetry,” Megatron grumbled.

“Alright,” Rung said, “give me poetry, then.” 

Megatron lifted himself only a bit, sliding up Rung’s cock, and then rocked back down, watching pleasure overcome Rung’s smug expression with no little satisfaction. He hummed thoughtfully to himself. The rocking settled into a steady, shallow pace, keeping Megatron as full as he could manage while still meeting Rung’s needs. 

“Some men say an army of horses,” he murmured, eyes falling half-closed, “and some men say an army on foot. And some men say—”

He sucked in a breath; Rung had figured out how to dig his hooves into the earth and buck up against Megatron, spearing him sudden and _hard._

 _“Ah,”_ he managed, “An—an army of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is—” 

Stars shot across his vision.

“—What you love.”

He struggled to catch his breath while his body clenched around the cock in him, automatically, each helpless squeeze forcing another wave of heat through his belly.

“I like that one,” Rung said, with a kind of dazed delight.

“Mmhm,” Megatron said, which was the best he could manage without a recitation to fall back on.

His thighs were beginning to burn just slightly with the exertion of lifting himself, but he took a strange viscous sort of pleasure in it—like the ache where Rung’s cock pried him open, it was a kind of shimmery suffering, punishment he knew he could take.

“You should touch yourself,” Rung said, breathlessly, “you do have two hands, after all.”

Megatron realized his hand had been loose and motionless around his cock for a long time now, almost more to ground himself than to make himself feel good in any way. He gave himself a testing stroke. The intensity nearly made his eyes roll back.

“Good,” Rung said, “perfect. Now the other hand.”

Panting, Megatron shot Rung a mute, uncertain look.

“Your chest,” Rung encouraged. 

Embarrassment warmed Megatron unexpectedly. Why was _this_ the thing he was self conscious about? But the embarrassment itself was a kind of heat too, only adding new urgency to the arousal pooled between his hips. Hesitating, he lifted his other hand. His fingertips skated over his stomach, until his thumb rolled over the peak of a nipple. A whimper shot through his throat at the bright flash of something _good,_ from something tender and small and needy under his fingers.

“Oh, that’s _lovely,”_ Rung said. He gave Megatron’s thighs an encouraging squeeze. 

Megatron dug a canine into his lip. He could feel himself up like this, pretend at shamelessness, if it was what _Rung_ wanted. That wasn’t—that wasn’t anything he needed to hold back on here. No one was watching but Rung, and Rung made no secret of wanting to see it—

Rung cooed delight and appreciation as Megatron kneaded his own chest, pinching and pulling until the dark bud there was raw. There was a heady, languid sprawl to all of it; he forgot to bounce himself until Rung’s hips startled him again with needy little thrusts. 

That happened several times. When Rung really started whimpering in earnest underneath him, Megatron quietly decided that all the self indulgent groping could wait for another time, and firmly devoted himself to the more important matter at hand: riding Rung's sweet little cock until he'd been emptied of every last drop of come. A very important business. Absolutely essential. 

Just when Megatron really thought he was getting somewhere with it, though, Rung let out a distressed sound and tipped his head back, expression clouding. 

Megatron narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“I, ah,” Rung said, “I don’t want to finish too soon—before you do—”

Oh. Yes. There was that.

“Actually,” Megatron admitted. “It’s not considered polite for you to keep fucking a man after he’s already come. It would—it would be perfectly fine for you to come first, then finish me off—”

 _“Mmn,”_ Rung moaned, squirming with the intensity of whatever Megatron was making him feel, fingers scrabbling. 

“But,” Megatron said, and then almost didn’t finish, almost couldn’t bring himself to. “But— I’d like it. If I came. And then you kept fucking me.”

“...Pardon?” 

Oh hell. Megatron slowed, and then dropped to all fours, knees sliding open on the grass. He considered Rung for a moment, the freckles on his skin, the fine points of his features. _Whatever you want_ , Rung had said.

“I want you to keep going,” he said, “after I come. I want to feel how hard you still are inside of me, even after I’m done, even after I can’t make myself go any further. Use me. Take me for all I’m worth.”

Rung's immediate response was to stuff a knuckle into his mouth, taking several deep breaths before he finally managed to reply, “You’re really going to have to ration that kind of talk, if you want me to last as long as all that.”

Relief swooped in Megatron’s chest. He flashed Rung a smirk, and then rolled his hips in a smooth, languid stroke.

“I advise you to hold on tight then,” he said. “We’re a long way from done.”

\---

They finished, eventually, by the fading of daylight over their miniature bacchanal. Extremely sore and insufferably pleased, and dirty, and exhausted, after several rounds of testing and recovery and kissing and missing each others windows of climax and pushing on into the next cycle of the same. Rung was proving to be a ferociously quick study. Megatron was a little bit in admiration of it. 

“You know,” said Megatron, curled up around Rung on the crushed grass, surveying the long shadows of the glade with a thoughtful gaze, “there’s a spot over there that would make a good campbed, for the winter.”

\---

“You know,” said Megatron, considering the firepit he’d dug and just finished lining with stones, “the bottom of it is waterlogged, but some of that tree could still be useful.”

\---

“You know,” said Megatron, laying aside the axe to wipe his forehead, “if it’s not some great obscure calamity, you have a few sturdy hardwoods around here that would make a good strong roof.”

\---

“You know,” said Megatron, offering down a hand so that he could pull Rung up next to him, seated on top of the stacked timber at the glade edge, “the winter night would be a lot more bearable with some walls. I could enclose the roof, while I’m at it.”

\---

“You know,” Megatron said, tucking the thick blanket he’d brought a little tighter around Rung’s ears, to protect the delicate points against the chill of early autumn, “I could stay for longer out here with you, if the shack had a kitchen of some sort… maybe some storage racks as well...”

\---

“You know,” said Megatron, twisting the last of the hooks into the wood of the cupboard, “you could stay here too. I mean, even when I’m not visiting. Other gods may have temples, but I can’t see a reason why you shouldn’t have a house, if you like. Since I’ve already gone to the trouble of building one.” 

\---

"You know," said Megatron. At the fire, steam was spilling out from under the lid of the cast iron pot.

"Yes," said Rung, the edges of his eyes creasing as he smiled into his steaming cup, "I think I do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sappho translations by Anne Carson


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